These landed on my proverbial desk while I was gone over the summer courtesy of Timberland Abington and Sky of Epiphany. Timberland Abington was probably among the most refreshing concepts from a large brand that was probably hitting a bit of stagnation. Aside from these shoes, they did a great job diversifying their portfolio with lifestyle products that weren’t ugly dress sneaker joints or of course some construction boot derivative.

The Rugged Handsewn shoe came packaged with a nice canvas sling bag and polar fleece blanket(unseen, it was tough to throw it in the frame). Maybe I’m thinking too much but the polar fleece while I’m sure will be supremely warm, didn’t really fit with the heritage/vintage/”whatever you want to call it” theme. I really like the whole Vibram Christy outsole on anything upper… or I did. Not that I’m 100% on the elitist tip, it’s more the desensitization effect. It simple isn’t as exciting or cool as the first batch. Of course not to necessarily fault Timberland Abington, they have been doing a white wedge outsole since the subrand’s onset. There have been some good versions along the way involving a nice robust, off-white outsole. Starting with the eYe JUNYA WATANABE COMME des GARCONS joints last year and the subsequent wave of Tricker’s customs, but now anyone and everybody is doing it. Nothing is immune to the Vibram Christy outsole these days. But I must stay true to a pair of Danner Japan Mountain Light IIs I have, still my favorite boots of all time.

Thanks a lot to Sky and co., the whole package is pretty useful and the bag is good for lugging random stuff around. I must admit the chunkier boat shoe is tougher to pull off in my eyes… oh wait it’s just my pinner calves (I swear it’s cause I have a high calve insertion point! haha).

-Eugene

I won’t lie, when I cracked open the slide box to these, I was disappointed…

Back in February, I was given the opportunity to mess around at the new NIKEiD Studio in Hong Kong. Among the three models I did was an OG Nike Free 5.0. I based my colorway around the boot that essentially started the “arms race” (aka creating the lightest boot possible) in football, the Nike Mercurial R9 (middle of the page). I had figured the colors were pretty spot on and a light gray would be a good substitue for the OG silver, but yeh… shit just wasn’t the same. Otherwise the shoe came out alright. Check the card to see the difference in color though.

Thanks to Nike HK for the opportunity!

-Eugene

For a few years now, Nike has been paying tribute to one of the most celebrated yearly events, Chinese New Year. With this year being the Year of the Tiger, it comes as no surprise the most prominent aspect of a tiger and its stripes are a direct influence in the design. However, kudos to Nike for going the tonal route, but Nike Sportswear has been pretty good about this in past years with mostly subtle designs. Although the notable exception was the Year of the Dog Uptowns from a few years ago, they went against the grain and put together probably my favorite “Year of the…” release to date.

Pony hair (I’m pretty sure) makes an appearances as well and oddly enough it works within the whole dynamic of the shoe. These are sort of in-line with the Year of the Dog Air Force 1 Hyperstrikes that had “fur” on them as well… a move that I didn’t really mind at all. That’s not to say I like them all, the Hideout Footscapes weren’t my cup of tea… actually I take that back, it’s cause it’s a Footscape and I absolutely hate that shoe haha. Ok that was a cheapshot, I was just looking for a way to slander the Footscape.

My boy Alex over at Starks is killing it as of late, making another cameo on this pack with some custom laces in a silk pouch. Somebody correct me if I’m wrong but they slimmed down these Cortez joints and they are the usual fat bulbous toebox shits I’m accustomed to. All in all solid job from Nike on this one though.

But on a sidenote, how will releases and sneakers themed around Chinese holidays change down the line? Taking a cue from various luxury brands that create exclusives for the China-market (Leica M8.2 China Edition *shudders*), undoubtedly there is a “Mainland China” aesthetic to the products embraced in that region. In a general overview, bright, loud, tacky and logo-driven might best sum it up. Some brands toy with the thought of changing their decade/century old design-language to help infiltrate China better… but for those who stand their ground, will they be left behind? Refer back to this post in 5 years.

Big thanks to Rocky for the hook-up, he be holding it down in Shanghai!!!

Oh yeh these came with a big, heavy wooden box, but unfortunately it got shit-kicked on the ride over.

-Eugene

Earlier this week, I got the invite to check out Hong Kong’s first NIKEiD Studio. I don’t really like calling it a “studio”, seems a little too proper and an over-glorification of what is essentially picking a few different color panels on a sneaker. For the longest time I’ve always fucked with NIKEiD, but alas, I never lived anywhere in which I could get a pair done domestically. Back when it first launched, I remember the colors and models were pretty limited but that has quickly change. The pioneering movement of allowing people to customize their own shoes is a commonstay in the market these days with virtually all the big brands out there having their stake. And of course we can’t forget all the other artisan brands out there that have been doing it for a minute. NIKEiD itself has matured nicely. There’s an overwhelming opportunity at your grasp with many familiar models as well as apparel and accessories. The interesting aspect is that in the past, you couldn’t really expect big marquee products to hit NIKEiD… but these days you have top-of-the-line performance products like the Kobe V, Air Max 360 and the CTR360 Maestri all up for grabs alongside cornerstones of Nike’s lifestyle segment with Dunks, Air Force 1s, Air Max runners etc.

The Hong Kong NIKEiD studio is located in Silvercord, a relatively well-branded mall in Tsim Sha Tsui right near the harbor. Within the mall, they’re pretty well stacked with retailers like IT, D-Mop, an IT outlet and various other flagship stores to which IT holds a license. Nike has a pretty big presence in the mall occupying a few floors. I sat down to an iMac running the NIKEiD website exclusively. Overall, the experience is pretty painless, in fact you probably experience the same thing online at NIKEiD anyways. The choices as I mentioned are staggering in the form of exactly what you can and want to customize. I figured I’d focus more on lifestyle stuff since I don’t really have any need for performance activities aside from soccer (although I did put together a pair of CTR360 Maestris).

You obviously don’t have free-reign in all the colors, but you are given a pretty solid selection. I found some shoes easier to customize, but that’s totally up to you. I mean, what it comes down to is how can you link colors together as you see them on a screen. I actually wonder how they decide which colors and hues of colors to use. Seems somewhat random but I’m not sure. All in all, as much as I like the LunarTrainer, it just looked like shit no matter what I did with the colors. Some people were relatively simple, ok I take that back, overly simple and went a full-on tonal route in white or gray *cough cough Kevin haha*. But I figured, why not put together something that had a few colors but could still look good. There’s a bit of oversimplification these days that I’m getting somewhat bored of. Not that I don’t appreciate cleanliness in colors and design, but overall, there are times when it’s simply too boring for me. Don’t get me wrong, I would still wear it, but I wouldn’t be exclusive to something ultra-minimalistic.

All in all, despite the fact the offline and online experience are virtually the same, it was still a fun opportunity. Being in person, you do have a person by your side to give you a break-down of the materials as well as providing swatches. But if you’re in the comfort of your own home, you can spend however long you want. Apparently some dude in Shanghai spent a quarter of the day and sat there for 6 hours doing 4 pairs of shoes… imagine if you give him the opportunity to do a Nike Sportwear Air Force 1 Bespoke haha.

-Eugene

What to pick?!

Some special gift lacelocks.

I didn’t end up doing this. While aesthetically I liked it. Definitely not something I would wear all that often. The shit on the wing flap is Safari which was something you couldn’t really deviate from. But based on the colors, I was thinking Fred Flinstone.

My first choice was the Blazer, I actually don’t own a single pair of Blazers but the shoe itself is so representative of the times… simple, basic… oh and yeh vulcanized. Based on my outgoing line of the last paragraph, pretty contradictory on my part hahah. But the Blazer is a pretty easy shoe to fuck with, only a few choices when it comes to paneling. The “Haversack” yellow wasn’t necessarily my first choice but it was the most consistent throughout so I just stayed with it. When I mean consistent, I mean that for some parts of the shoe, you get scaled back into only 3-4 choices as opposed to the full set of colors. This is usually on things that require rubber or molding like the vulcanized foxing band. I’m a fan of monotone soles/outsoles/foxing bands so I went that route on the Blazer and wanted some color in there.

I wish the black could have been gray on these CTR360 Masetris!!! Straight reminiscent of the Nike Mercurial R9 from 1998… but alas… no dice. On the collar I had 2 FOOT embroidered… not that I am one to be two-footing people on the pitch… guess I’ll have to start haha.

So what I couldn’t do with the CTR360 Maestri with the Mercurial R9 from 1998, I did it with the Nike Free 5.0 haha. Pretty happy with how it turned out. Black outsole is a bit weird but it was that or white as my other option and the white against the gray wasn’t look right. I’m pretty stoked about this one.

I won’t lie, I was messing around with this extensively, but then realized they weren’t the Lasers… so I politely put it in the trash.

Here are some samples on the wall… can’t say I found a lot of inspiration here. But the all-gray samples are pretty neat.

They say 4-6 weeks… I say way over 6 weeks. It’s Chinese New Years this month, that’s the equivalent of Christmas, Easter and Thanksgiving rolled into one for the Mainland folk.

Last week I was blessed with a trifecta of packages in the mail… always good to know people are looking out for you haha. First up was the Zebra Sharbo X pen. Its claim to fame is an assortment of different customizable pen options and tips. Two of the three different options can include ball-point, gel and stylus tips in all your usual widths such as 0.38 mm, 0.5 mm and 0.7 mm. Of course colors range from your usual blue, black and red to more unorthodox colors under the rainbow. The 3rd option is a mechanical pencil and I really won’t be using that shit all that often which sucks cause you can’t roll with three pen options. But the whole pen is pretty solid, made out of brass. The clip would have been better off if it wasn’t plastic. Oh well. The ink is pretty buttery smooth so no complaints here. No point assaulting your eyes with a pen test with my horrendous hand-writing. I bought my barrel off of English Rakuten and the refills from pencils.jp (you can buy barrel and refills off there but I didn’t know) but if you’re in the US, you can get it all through Jet Pens.

Next up was a pair of the new Stussy x Haze x PRO-KEDS joints courtesy of Dante Ross who’s overseeing things at PRO-KEDS. Haze has been BIG this year in 2010 already, making airwaves with his Stussy collabo. Can’t really fault these two entities, few are more legit or respected. Some might say that Haze’s work is overly simple, yet from so many angles being un-complex in your aesthetics isn’t an easy feat either. I always love watching people do up their tags and when Haze was in Hong Kong a few years ago, it was great seeing how smooth and methodical he was. But back to PRO-KEDS, I must say Dante Ross has been doing a fine job and putting together some real solid collaborations hitting various markets. Awhile back he had offered to do something with Hypebeast but I must say, we were a little narrow-sighted and weren’t sure exactly what Dante had cooked up in the pipeline. That’s the shitty party about conversing and trying to talk shop over the Internet, it really can be difficult to get the point across at times. Oh well our loss totally but what can you really do?

Last but certainly not least, Philly G. hooked up this sick Bread & Butter (the tradeshow) x Penfield down vest. Real solid shit, with a nice raw denim meets rich brown leather yoke. How do I know it’s essentially raw denim… aside from the coarse texture as you’d assume with raw denim steez, it stained the shit outta my white Bedwin button-up haha… but as I told Philly, “I ain’t mad at you” cause luckily that shit washed out. But worth noting, this recently concluded Bread & Butter was Phil’s last one before he takes the plunge to start his own shit. I feel for the person filling his shoes cause Phil was a super character with Bread & Butter… a definite great all around guy who I had the good fortune of meeting in person in Tokyo during Halloween. In addition, he’s put together some solid projects with B&B in the past which include this aforementioned vest, headphones with WeSC, a fucking baby stroller with Bugaboo (!!!) and a two-pack of “Salmon & Butter” sneakers last year with ASICS. Best of luck to this dude… but he won’t need it.

-Eugene

1 – 0.38 mm Pencil | 2 – 0.5 mm Black Gel | 3 – 0.7 mm Magenta Gel

Different lines mark each option.

Packaging was legit.

Unfortunately, in one month I’ll have to put this sucker away cause it’ll be too war.

A VERY close friend of me once told me that “somebody” he knows designed a series of adidas Consortium Superstars a few years back which were heavily influenced by Star Wars. The shoes in question embodied the foundation of Star Wars, the Dark Side of the Force and the Light Side of the Force. The resulting design and featured a black vs. white combo. The aglets of the laces were colored in the relevant Lightsaber hues of red for the Dark Side and neon green for the Light Side. The appropriation didn’t stop there as the shoes came in a action-figure style packaging complete with the use of a Star Wars’ familiar type-font. Only problem, there wasn’t an actual license on adidas’ behalf for this project. EDIT: Here’s a link back to Nice Kicks who have the shoes in question.

Apparently, $1,000,000 USD later and a lawsuit, the shoes never got released and if they did, they weren’t supposed to. There was even talk that the shoes were even more audacious in the sampling stages, superimposing the Superstar Shelltoe onto the head of Vader and Yoda respectively. All hearsay I guess…

Fast forward to 2010, adidas and Star Wars come together on legitimate terms this time. I’m sure many have mixed reactions to the whole team-up. On one hand, from a commercial stand-point and arguably the one that is most important at the end of the day, adidas is introducing a whole wack of people to the adidas Originals franchise. Who hasn’t seen Star Wars??? The fact that this first pack revolves around the first three movies also means one thing… an open door for more collections down the line with the later movies.

I personally never paid attention to the latter three “episodes”, but the new generation surely did. Unfortunately, there’s something about associating one’s self with Star Wars. Maybe cause it’s on the sci-fi tip, but I sort liken it to being something everybody will generally love and appreciate but will be slow to acknowledge in the public sphere.

Anyways on to the product which I must thank Gary and Charlie over at Crooked Tongues for some SPEEDY turn around. I don’t think there’s a more knowledgeable and legitimate online sneaker retailer out there. By far the cream of the crop. Found the Darth Vader ZX 8000s on my doorstep in only a few days from the UK!

Generally I find sneaker design quite difficult when a presented theme has the opportunity to be re-appropriated very literally. You’re taking something that is pretty much tangible and have to sort of design something that takes into account the inspirations but isn’t too literal. All-in-all, I thought the collection itself wasn’t bad at all. The real literal models that had me wondering such as the “Battle of Hoth” Micropacer, “Tie Fighter” Nizzas and the “Death Star” Superstars probably would have been fine as kid’s shoes… but adults ehhhhhhhhhh. You can pretty much slap anything on a shoe for kids and nobody will really be as quick to judge. When you’re 4 years old I would imagine you would be able to wear as bright of fucking shoes as you’d want!

For many of these models, I think if you released them as in-line styles and took out the tongue logos, people could probably reference the colorways to iconic aspects of Star Wars on their own and bestow the appropriate nicknames. The packaging isn’t unique and it has been done before with A Bathing Ape etc, but since it’s so fitting, no qualms here. We did something similar for our Hypebeast x Subcrew caps in a sort of (cheesy) quasi-super hero theme as well.

-Eugene

On the topic of taking things too literally… yeh way to go New Era congratulations.

On to the pics…

The tags sort of ruined this picture haha.

Black midsoles are tough to pull off in any event but I don’t think anything else would have worked… maybe “Dark Side of the Force” red instead of black?

(I stare at emails all day, I still love reading people’s hand-writing, even however ugly it is… haha)

I don’t really think synthetic boots got popular until the Mercurial from Nike back in the late 90s, in fact I don’t think anybody even dropped a synthetic model back in the day up until the Mercurial. Awesome Brazil-inspired colorway aside from the original (fat) Ronaldo Nike Mercurials, I was never all that interested in non-leather boots. I was brought up in a camp where you wore boots that were probably 2 sizes too small in the width (but fine in the length) and you were meant to tough it out until your boots stretched. You were allowed various techniques to get them to fit faster like wearing them in the shower etc. Overall, I was also under the understanding that synthetic boots weren’t going to stretch as much as leather, but in reality, stretch/mold whatever you want to call it really is a subjective term. If you can get your foot into the boot and lace them up, I’m pretty sure in this day and age, the boot WILL eventually fit. This was the case with a pair of adidas F50i Tunits. There are many positives to synthetics, lighter weight, better abrasion resistance and they don’t drink the water as prominently as their leather counterparts meaning you don’t get soggy feet as quickly. But when it rains, your boots will get wet regardless so not really a strong point in my opinion.

Anyways, to the topic at hand, among Nike’s newer football/soccer boots, the CTR360 MAESTRI. The boot is in my opinion the best looking boot on the market. The color blocking is dope and the debut colorway seen here is totally on-point. Regardless of if the Black/Red is a safe bet, it’s much better than the white/yellow of the adidas Predator X. The boots main selling point in my eyes was the Kanga-Lite upper which is synthetic in nature but created to mimic the desirable properties of kangaroo leather which includes its touch and ability to stretch… now you sort of see where I was coming from with the opening paragraph. Other features which really are of no relevance to me include some zones on the outsept for a better touch and some rubber instep crap for better passing. Man if you can’t hit a clean, accurate pass with your instep, you better go back to the drawing board on technique, c’mon it’s the easiest pass to make in football. I don’t mind a lot of these techs incorporated though, cause unlike most Nike performance products, none of these techs are actively promoted all that much. I suppose this boot is meant to be compared more so to the adiPure from adidas rather than the Predator but when the time comes for review I’ll make the comparison anyways.

I’m about to leave out the door in the next 15 minutes and I’ll give this a first run-out tonight and probably a few more to see how they perform. Straight onto the foot, they feel ok. Not Predator X good cause the X’s are a bit wider. The construction and quality is really good. Maybe you don’t get that high-quality feel with the Kanga-Lite that you get with leather but the stitching all matches up really well etc. Heel counter is really solid.

Thanks to Tim Yu (seen back in August) who recently took on a role at Nike Football/Soccer & Action Sports for hooking it up. I’m excepting some big things from Tim who previously cut his teeth over at Cool Hunting. Big corporations need heads that know what’s up cause the old guard mostly doesn’t get it still.

-Eugene (Twitter | flickr)

Comes with a card to sign-up at NikeSoccer.com to learn some new skills as taught by various top Nike-endorsed pro clubs. Yes I need to add to my lowly keeper repertoire of moves.

This aspect of the breakdown was really well done, from a printing/explanation perspective.

Back in the day, one of my favorite sites to check out was Kicksology. For the unfamiliar and perhaps the new bucks, it was a site that almost purely revolved around the review of performance basketball shoes (although they did throw in the periodical lifestyle/post-game shoe). I actually rarely if ever played ball, but I was interested in seeing how the technology developed by all these sportswear brands were translating in the real world in terms of performance. Known as Professor KO, the eloquent write-ups were genuinely interesting despite the fact I would never ever be wearing the shoes he was reviewing. Solecollector has re-published a few old reviews you can check out to get the just of exactly what he was putting down. I still have an affinity of sorts for performance footwear, just to see what’s the latest and greatest shit and how technology has come to manifest itself in the athletics world. Although for the most part I had largely been out the sporting arena since I hung up the (soccer/football) boots two years ago , I have since “returned” as of a few months ago. I’ve been lifting in beat Chuck Taylor All Stars (no not Hiroshi Fujiwara joints haha) for a minute and on the odd occasion I would run in Nike Free 4.0s so that was the extent of my athletic shoe use as of late anyways. Just recently I’ve started getting more active and sort of kept on top of footwear developments, I’ve become weary of the current crop of running shoes due to the un-healthy nature of all these overly cushioned and supportive shoes (shit the big shoe companies DON’T want you to know). Emphasis should be simply to enhance the foot’s natural biomechanics, something that has come through evolution throughout the years and based on our hunter-gatherer lifestyle up until approximately 10,000 years ago. Nike’s Free outsole has been the best move from a large brand towards a shoe that places more importance on your foot’s natural ability to cushion and work so I’ve sort gone with that and tried to change up my running style to land forefoot rather than heel first. Ok, I’m getting derailed from the original point of this post which was to give a run-down, in a sort of tribute to Professor KO and Kicksology. My medium and platform is different with a football/soccer shoe, but performance footwear needs reviewing anyways.

So… the adidas Predator franchise, probably one of the most well-known line of soccer/football boots out there. It celebrates its 10th incarnation with the Predator X. Aesthetically, this is probably the biggest change yet mostly cause the boot goes away with its traditional fold-over tongue style. A shame really, cause now it sort of looks like the Total 90 series from Nike. Branding is a bit much for me, adidas has traditionally been more subtle in their promotion of technologies, but as you see beneath the transparent Predator vamps is PREDATOR across pretty much the whole instep. As well, what the hell is with the blinged out bit on the external heel counter? Bound to get scratched to shit and it just sticks out like a sore thumb. Yes adidas, it’s hideous, please get rid of it.

Construction & Materials
From a quality perspective, boots are what you’d expect from a top of the line boot. With all the pieces that go into the upper, the quality is good cause I assume it’s relatively labor-intensive to put together and align all the pieces. In what many might perceive as a sacrilegious move, no kangaroo leather on this sucker, instead you get “Taurus” leather. Same difference to me, I never really got that “buttery leather” feeling from adidas’ k-leather anyways, so aside from being able to stretch I don’t really feel all that much benefit from k-leather. For the last few Preds, we’ve seen the move away from a full-leather upper and replacing pretty much the middle of the shoe with a synthetic material to alleviate weight. Makes sense, as well I usually never need any stretch in those areas anyways, the fitting is controlled by the laces.

Fit
The initial fit of this was unreal. The absolute best-fitting Predator I’ve ever worn and I’ve worn quite a few of them. Maybe it’s cause of my fat, relatively Fred Flinstone-esque feet (you haven’t seen my friends though, she’s got boxes on her feet pretty much), but the new roomier shape of the toebox makes for quick and easy break-in for me. I can’t really say how much or how little the Taurus leather can stretch but maybe people with narrow feet might need to look elsewhere. Before, I would really struggle with sore feet when breaking in new Predators, but within 30 minutes these were actually good to go. The laces provide a pretty solid lock-down fit. There’s some Orthofit feature implemented, but in all honesty, a lot of these technologies could never be tested independently, so there’s no point really putting a lot of weight on them in my opinion. You pretty much have to review it as a package. Unlike the F50i Tunits (which aren’t even worth a review, just plain Jane, middle of the pack boring in my opinion), the lock-down fit was real good. I am however a bit worried down the line, the laceloops might rip, but who knows. I have been reefin’ on them pretty hard to get a nice tight fit.

Traction
adidas Traxion is about the same as always, I haven’t really worn any other brands aside from adi so I’m a poor judge across other brands. I’ve preferred Traxion/bladed studs much more than traditional conical studs (perhaps my disdain for the F50i). The studs (although not pictured) are pretty neat, the initial bit is clear and the tips are yellow.

Miscellaneous
So another big thing to mention is this new “Powerspine” technology they put into the outsole. It’s inspired by adidas’ goalkeeper glove tech, Fingersave. Essentially, imagine a strip of material that can curve forward, but can’t bend backwards. Actually, if you’re a Nike Basketball techhead, Nike had a similar technology called the Monkey Paw that was in a Vince Carter signature (the one with the rubber shroud)… yeh I learned that from Kicksology haha. The whole point is to support your foot and remove any lost kinetic energy from impacting the ball since your foot is naturally quite soft and flexible. I’ve worn aspects of this “Power” technology in other Predators and actually did feel a difference. I can’t really say this Powerspine stuff necessarily works but the videos are pretty convincing haha. I almost felt as though the older styles were better, the ones that just had a weighted insole that encouraged power that way. I won’t really comment on what the Predator is actually known for, the Predator vamps which are meant to increase swerve and accuracy… you’re talking about a a goalkeeper turned outfield Sunday league player who would much rather smash a ball with his laces to finish rather than go for some cute little tuck into the corner. As well, I always thought it would have made much more sense to have the Predator vamps on the first metatarsal of the foot but it’s placed quite high-up on the boot itself.

The Final Word
Fit alone, these boots are awesome. There’s a lot of unnecessary shit going on which I really don’t care for. I remember when adidas used to make an “un-Predator” version of their boots which were essentially the same but came with a full-leather upper as opposed to having Predator vamps. But I guess why make a cheaper and arguably BETTER BOOT. As I see it, an un-Predator bound boot could stretch in more places so it would mold a little better. I really have no use for the Predator tech but pretty much everything else I’m feeling from the Powerspine to the Orthofit and the shape of the upper. I would like to see an adidas x Nike “Flywire” un-Predator… that would be a dream boot haha. I can’t and won’t comment on “WHILE THIS HELP MY TOUCH?!?!?”… hate to break it to you, but if you have cinder blocks for feet, no boot will help your touch son…

Just as an FYI and if anybody’s curious, nobody pays me to write this (aside from some free gear), I just do it cause I enjoy analyzing product.

-Eugene (Twitter | flickr)